Victory! The unelected dictatorial Iraqi regime of CIA-designee Iyad
Allawi, with the assistance of the most powerful police force in the
world, has killed 600 "insurgents" in Falluja, flattened and
"pacified" the city, and driven hundreds of thousands of people from
their homes.

...

The crime for which the Fallujans were punished was their refusal to
submit to the authority of an unelected CIA-designated dictator, Iyad
Allawi, and to obey the orders of his all-powerful police force (the
U.S. military), a police force that is significantly more powerful
than the one that Saddam Hussein used to put down insurrections
against his regime. The message sent to Iraqis at Falluja is very
simple and, in fact, is no different in principle from the message
sent to the Iraqi people from Abu Ghraib prison: "Resist us or
disobey us -- or countenance those who do resist us or disobey us
-- and we will punish you."

Interestingly, it was the same type of message that U.S. officials,
including those in the military, sent the American people when they
flattened and "pacified" the Branch Davidian compound at
Waco several years ago.

NYT. In the north, Mosul remained restive on Friday as the government deployed national guardsmen from outside the area to fill a security vacuum after hundreds of Iraqi policemen fled Thursday in the face of a guerrilla uprising. The police chief of Mosul was fired, another senior Iraqi security officer was assassinated and the top American commander in the region said the loyalty and reliability of the city's entire 4,000- to 5,000-member police force was now suspect... The police chief of Samarra, Taleb Shamel, told The Associated Press that he had also been fired... Iraqi officials said national guardsmen from near the Syrian border were being sent to Mosul to help put down the uprising. The brigades are made up of Kurdish militiamen. [John Robb's Weblog]

Evidently the Feds have finally caught onto the old "divide and rule" strategy. If they can provoke a civil war, all they have to do is hide in the Green Zone until the factions exhaust themselves fighting each other, and then they will have a much easier time ruling the survivors.3:54:29 PM comment ()